On Friday, Mexican President Andres Manuel López Obrador said that “the pause continues” in relations with Spain because he considered that “there is no attitude of respect” when the Spanish authorities do not respond to their claims.
“The pause continues because there is not, on their part, an attitude of respect. I sent a respectful letter to the head of state, to the king of Spain, and he did not even have the attention to answer me“, claimed the president during his morning press conference from the National Palace.
Last February, the Mexican president called for a “pause” in relations with Spain after he demanded an apology for the abuses committed during the “La Conquista,” the Spanish colonization of present-day Mexico.
This call by López Obrador caused friction between the two countries.
“When we ask him to initiate a new stage in the relations between Mexico and Spain, we consider important a gesture of humility offering forgiveness, apologies for the extermination, the repression, the assassinations of the native peoples, and they say we have to thank them for coming to civilize us.”
AMLO
Until this request, Mexican governments had maintained a perspective of Mexican history that emphasized the mix with the Spanish. At the same time, López Obrador defends a direct relationship that links today’s Mexico with pre-Hispanic cultures.
“We are not going to ask them to give back everything they took, just that they recognize the abuses, the massacres, that the native peoples were repressed and that after independence, we also committed those excesses,” he said.
It is not about a rupture between Mexico and Spain.
At the same time, López Obrador reiterated that this “is not a rupture, it is a pause” while pointing out that all Spaniards “are welcome.”
“For the Spanish, Mexico is their home. No Spanish company is prevented from coming to do legal business in Mexico, what we don’t want is for them to see us as a land of conquest. What we do not want is to be treated as a colonial country. That is all.”
President of Mexico
He also reiterated that the Spanish people “are extraordinary, first-class” and assured Spain’s democratic and progressive movements “are exceptional people, very intelligent, very supportive.”
He also asked that Spanish companies “do not come to promote and encourage corruption in Mexico, that they do not take the presidents of their companies’ employees, that they respect the dignity of the Mexican people and nation.”
López Obrador’s statements come just one day after the Mexico-Spain Binational Commission was held in Mexico, with the participation of the Mexican Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Marcelo Ebrard, and the Spanish Minister José Manuel Albares Bueno, in which both stressed the relaunching of bilateral relations.